A review by tuisku
Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

I cannot rate this because I am too ignorant to have appreciated it or really disliked it. I struggled to understand the purpose of it. Yet I endured till the end.

There, couched in the grass, curled in an olive green ring, was a snake. Dead? No, choked with a toad in its mouth. The snake was unable to swallow; the toad was unable to die. A spasm made the ribs contract; blood oozed. It was birth the wrong way around - a monstrous inversion. So, raising his foot, he stamped on them. The mass crushed and slithered. The white canvas on his tennis shoes was bloodstained and sticky. But it was action. Action relieved him. He strode to the Barn, with blood on his shoes.

'Dispersed are we,' she murmured. And held her cup out to be filled. She took it. 'Let me turn away', she murmured, turning, 'from the array' - she looked desolately round her -
'of china faces, glazed and hard. Down the ride, that leads under the nut tree, and the may tree,
away, till I come to the wishing well, where the washerwoman's little boy-' she dropped sugar,
two lumps, into her tea, 'dropped a pin. He got his horse, so they say. But what wish should I drop into the well?' She looked around. She could not see the man in grey, the gentleman farmer;
nor anyone known to her. 'That the waters should cover me', she added, 'of the wishing well.'